Table of content

Subject page
Introduction 1
Archimedes 2
Abū Rayhān al-Bīrūnī 2
Leonardo da Vinci 2
Evangelista Torricelli 2
Edme Mariotte 2
Blaise Pascal 2
Isaac Newton 3
Daniel Bernoulli 3
Leonhard Euler 3
Jean le Rond d'Alembert 3
A ntoine Chézy 3
Pierre Louis Georges 4
St. Venant 4
Poiseuille 4
Gaspard Riche de Prony 4
Johann Albert Eytelwein 4
Jean Nicolas Pierre Hachette 5
Lord Rayleigh 5
Osborne Reynolds 5
Navier and Stokes 5
Ludwig Prandtl 6
 Introduction
The historical development of fluid mechanics is roughly sketched out, based on
the most important contributions of a number of scientists and engineers. The
presentation does not claim to give a complete picture of the historical
developments: this is impossible owing to the constraints on allowable space in this
section. The aim is rather to depict the development over centuries in a generally
comprehensible way. In summary, it can be said that already at the beginning of the
nineteenth century the basic equations with which fluid flows can be described
reliably were known.
Solutions of these equations were not possible owing to the lack of suitable solution
methods for engineering problems and therefore technical hydraulics developed
alongside the field of theoretical fluid mechanics. In the latter area, use was made
of the known contexts for the flow of ideal fluids and the influence of friction
effects was taken into consideration via loss coefficients, determined empirically.
For geometrically complicated problems, methods based on similarity laws were
used to generalize experimentally achieved flow results. Analytical methods only
allowed the solution of academic problems that had no relevance for practical
applications. It was not until the second half of the twentieth century that the
development of suitable methods led to the numerical techniques that we have
today which allow us to solve the basic equations of fluid mechanics for practically
relevant flow problems. Parallel to the development of the numerical methods, the
development of experimental techniques was also pushed ahead, so that nowadays
measurement techniques are available which allow us to obtain experimentally
fluid mechanics data that are interesting for practical flow problems.

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Archimedes (287 BC –212 BC)
formulated the laws of buoyancy and applied them to floating and
submerged bodies, actually deriving a form of the differential calculus as
part of the analysis.

Applications: Sailing ships, irrigation systems

Abu Rayhan Al-Biruni (973-1048)

Al-Biruni and al-Khazini were the first to apply experimental
scientific methods to fluid mechanics, especially in the field of fluid
statics, such as for determining specific weights. Biruni discovered
that there is a correlation between the specific gravity of an object and
the volume of water it displaces.

Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519)

He derived the equation of conservation of mass in one-dimensional steady
flow. His notes contain accurate descriptions of waves, jets, hydraulic jumps, eddy
formation, and both low-drags (streamlined) and high-drag (parachute) designs.

Evangelista Torricelli (1608 –1647)

Torricelli's chief invention was the mercurial barometer, which arose
from solving an important practical problem. This was the first
barometer. This discovery has perpetuated his fame, and the Torr, a unit
of pressure commonly used in vacuum measurements, was named in his
honor

Edme Mariotte (1620-1684)

He is founded on a great variety of well-conducted experiments on the
motion of fluids, performed at Versailles and Chantilly. He built the first
wind tunnel and tested models in it.

Blaise Pascal (1623,1662)

Pascal's work in the fields of the study of hydrodynamics and hydrostatics
centered on the principles of hydraulic fluids. His inventions include the
hydraulic press (using hydraulic pressure to multiply force) and the syringe. he
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made important contributions to the study of fluids, and clarified the concepts of pressure and
vacuum by generalizing the work of Evangelista Torricelli.

Isaac Newton (1642-1727)

He postulated his laws of motion and the law of viscosity of the linear
fluids now called newtonian .

Daniel Bernoulli (1700-1782)

Together Bernoulli and Euler tried to discover more about the flow of fluids. In
particular, they wanted to know about the relationship between the speed at
which blood flows and its pressure. Bernoulli's method of measuring pressure
is still used today in modern aircraft to measure the speed of the air passing the
plane; that is its air speed.

Leonhard Euler (1707-1783)

Euler developed both the differential equations of motion of fluids and their
integrated form, now called the Bernoulli equation. This calculus was first
applied to the motion of water by d'Alembert, and enabled both him and Euler
to represent the theory of fluids in formulae restricted by no particular
hypothesis.

Jean le Rond d'Alembert (1717-1783)

D’Alembert used the equation developed by Euler to show his famous paradox:
that a body immersed in a frictionless fluid has zero drag.

Antoine Chézy (1718-1798)

First to express the mean flow velocity in terms of channel roughness,
hydraulic radius, and bed slope. This formula describes the mean flow velocity
of steady, turbulent open channel flow
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Pierre Louis Georges Dubuat (1734–1809)
One of the most successful labourers in the science of hydrodynamics at this period . he
published, in 1786, a revised edition of his Principes d'hydraulique, which contains a satisfactory
theory of the motion of fluids, founded solely upon experiments.

St. Venant (1797 - 1886 )

Formulated the equations of unsteady flow in open channels.

Poiseuille(1797-1869)
In 1838 he experimentally derived, and in 1840 and 1846 formulated and published,
Poiseuille's law. This concerns the voluminal laminar stationary flow of an
incompressible uniform viscous liquid (so-called Newtonian fluid) through a
cylindrical tube with constant circular cross-section.

Gaspard Riche de Prony (1755–1839)

The theory of running water was greatly advanced by the researches he had
done. he succeeded in drawing up general formulae, which afforded a simple
expression for the velocity of running water.

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Johann Albert Eytelwein (1764-1848)
He showed theoretically that a water wheel will have its maximum effect
when its circumference moves with half the velocity of the stream.

Jean Nicolas Pierre Hachette (1769-1834)

JNP Hachette in 1816-1817 published memoirs containing the results
of experiments on the spouting of fluids and the discharge of vessels.

Lord Rayleigh (1842-1919)

He proposed the technique of proposed the technique of while he was
trying to understand why the sky is blue.

Application: Dimensional analysis is used to derive relationships between the

physical quantities that are involved in a particular phenomenon that one
wishes to understand and characterize.

Osborne Reynolds (1842-1912)

published the classic pipe experiment in 1883 which showed the importance of
the dimensionless Reynolds number named after him.

Navier (1785-1836) and Stokes (1819-1903)

The Navier–Stokes equations, describe the motion of fluid
substances. These equations arise from applying
Newton's second law to fluid motion, together with the
assumption that the fluid stress is the sum of a diffusing
viscous term (proportional to the gradient of velocity),
plus a pressure term.
Application: The equations are useful because they describe
the physics of many things of academic and economic

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 interest. They may be used to model the weather, water flow in a pipe, air flow around a
wing.

Ludwig Prandtl (1875-1953)

Prandtl pointed out that fluid flows with small viscosity (water and air flows) can
be divided into a thin viscous layer, or boundary layer, near solid surfaces
and interfaces, patched onto a nearly inviscid outer layer, where the Euler
and Bernoulli equations apply.